


Casualties in Averting An Apocalypse

by ParadifeLoft



Series: Not Your Hero [2]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Interpersonal Conflict, Not Canon Compliant, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-06 23:37:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16842706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadifeLoft/pseuds/ParadifeLoft
Summary: A search-and-rescue mission on Belsavis goes horribly wrong, bringing the stress Rivka and her crew have been under since escaping the Emperor's station to a violent boil-over.





	Casualties in Averting An Apocalypse

Rivka’s breath came heavily and tasting like ash in her throat as the last Imperial soldier’s life winked out in the semi-twilight of the Belsavis cavern that had become in scant minutes a mass grave.

She’d pushed herself too hard again, not sure what or when exactly she’d done this time, but her body was fighting her and soreness ran along the length of her back where the cybernetics joined regardless; her endurance in a fight had clearly gone the same way as the awareness of her physical self she’d used to rely on. But it was done, and she could allow herself to half-lean, half-sit against one of the carved rock outcroppings she’d ended up by as she caught her breath, rode out the pulses of pain. This lead hadn’t come to the result she’d been hoping for, and that was an understatement considering the abilities Krannus’s cult lackeys had so gruesomely displayed, but…

Pressing palm heels against her forehead, she tried to massage out some of the fuzzy-sensation of the life-transfer spell Rayfel had done. They hadn’t got the results they wanted, but, they’d still gleaned a bit, and Khisit had covered her well enough in the fight for her to be standing here…

A sudden and gripping wave of false clear-headedness flooded through Rivka a moment later, riding on an unpredicted and violent boil of the tension and fury that had hollowed out a constant well inside her. Pushing herself back up without any care taken for her injuries, she rounded on Khisit as they stood skimming the contents of Rayfel’s comm.

“What the hell was that?” she snapped. Her body felt like it was burning, the inside of her mind felt like it was burning; somewhere that suffocating heat needed a release. “What goddamn part of hostage situation suggests you should go mouthing off to the shitheel with the blaster so you can get everybody killed?”

The initial flash of honest surprise on Khisit’s face rapidly gave way to a defensive scowl as they leveled glances with Rivka, arms crossing even more tightly if possible in front of their chest. Rivka didn’t care. They probably couldn’t even feel the bloody-iron residue of energy from whatever sorcery Rayfel had used on the scientists, a gauzy static over her senses like her own essence was enmeshed with the corpses’.

Not that Khisit would have known when to back down if their life depended on it. “The goal was to get the bastard to not shoot anyone, actually,” they replied, voice like a knife’s edge. “If we bluffed like we weren’t drooling Jedi lapdogs who wanted a medal for saving everyone, the Imps shouldn’t have tried threatening them to make us behave!” A tremor shook their hand that held the salvaged comm.

“Oh, well looks like you guessed that one right,” Rivka nearly spat back. It was cruel and petty and she didn’t care, she just wanted something else to hurt right now. “They stopped bothering with threats and just shot them all instead! You didn’t want a medal? Well tough, you’re going to get one anyway for ‘perfect example of how not to do things’.”

“Wow, you’re right, I’m really fucking sorry for making a bad judgement call!” In a calmer, more clinical part of her mind, Rivka noticed how Khisit tried to disguise the interval of shocked silence, grasping for a response before this statement with a burst of drama, voice raised, arms finally unfurling to gesture about the openness of the stone cavern. An earlier version of her might have actually managed to stop and care, too. “It’s not like anybody else involved in this shithole has ever made one of those before, oh no,” Khisit continued.

“And you know what?” they added. “In the grand scheme of things this is barely even a loss worth mourned.” Barely was half a puff of furious laughter on their lips, and one that drove an ice spike through Rivka’s blood. “You’re all ready to go off on that Senator over his science project; well who do you think was running it? Or god knows what else.”

And just like that, the heat-frenzy fury animating her boiled off as the weight of Khisit’s words sunk in. Now all she had was an aching spine again, a dizzy pounding in her head from the proximity to too much death, a cold sweat beading along her temples and the junctions between flesh and metal limbs from the unnatural juxtaposition of multiple climates her body wasn’t suited to. Numbly, her gaze slid away, and she hooked her lightsaber back into the clip on her belt. Touching it felt strange.

“I don’t want to hear you trying to brush off the deaths of sentient beings,” she murmured a few moments later. “I don’t know what work they did here, but it doesn’t mean they deserved… that.” The words rang hollow to her, and a piece of her cringed internally as she spoke. Wouldn’t just a moment without the universe staring at her hypocrisy be small enough to ask for…?

Khisit folded their arms up again, looking and feeling as though they still had several biting insults to hurl back sitting armed at the ready behind their teeth, but they didn’t say anything. At least for a few moments. The pair of them stood in a suffocating silence for a time - perhaps longer in Rivka’s mind than in reality, just as the silence itself was belied by psychically-audible whispers and groans of the planet and the beings on its surface - but eventually it was Khisit who broke the stalemate.

“We should go meet back with the others. See if they’ve found any other leads on Krannus.”

Rivka nodded. She didn’t quite trust herself to speak; the changing physical and spiritual stimuli of moving anywhere felt desperately unwelcome as dragging herself out of bed some of these days, but it was… necessary. She had become an agent of little but necessity. At least she’d be getting out of this head-clouding death miasma, heading back to the guard complex.

The speeder’s drone drowned most of her thoughts too, on the ride back, probably not a coincidence as it accompanied a withdrawal of her Force awareness into just herself as well. Khisit’s arms clung about her middle to the barest extent necessary for safety, but they otherwise kept themself as physically distant as possible on a two-seater bike - Rivka found the contact uncomfortable all the same.

She should apologize, she knew. She wanted to apologize, in the sort of abstract, intellectual way that she had used to want to have the Temple masters talk about overcoming emotion and attachment in a way that referenced attachments she found comprehensible. But keeping the armor intact that kept her guts and sanity from spilling out… Any words that were honest in a way other than anger would be like driving a dagger point through the seams.

Or, well, sanity was probably overstating it, she understood herself well enough to know. But even like this - she could fight. Kill. Defend, prevent… something. Necessity.

When she pulled in past the guard towers’ force fields, powering down and dismounting from the speeder bike, for a small moment she relaxed into a brief, tiny sliver of an illusion of being done. With just a small part, she knew, couldn’t ever forget, but it was one lead down, one trip out and return… Like her body letting out its sigh of air and tension, so did the shields about her mind diffuse out from their tight-woven pattern, and the touch of other beings’ presences could be felt without immediate pain.

Khisit stood a bit away, unstrapping their gear pack from the speeder’s mount, and their Force presence accordingly overlapped Rivka’s small range of awareness.

She hadn’t really let the jagged splits and torn edges on theirs as well enter her sight, had she.


End file.
